Reflections on an Execution (from the South Dakota Peace & Justice Center)

Our friends at the South Dakota Peace & Justice Center posted a blog entry about the recent execution of Eric Robert. We thought it was worth sharing:

Reflections on an Execution

"Last night, October 15th, the state of South Dakota put Eric Robert to death.

"Robert’s case was not clouded by questions of possible innocence, of the exculpatory DNA evidence that comes too late. There was no chance that the state was about to kill an innocent man: Robert pleaded guilty to his crime of murdering a prison guard in a botched escape attempt from the SD State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls. Neither was race a concern in this case: Robert was pretty clearly white.

"In short, many of the perennial questions that surround capital punishment were absent. In the wake of Robert’s execution, we are faced with a single stark question, unencumbered by procedural concerns: does the state have the right to kill? ..."